


A Beautiful Mess

by perdiccas



Category: Sense8 (TV)
Genre: First Time, Friendship, Multi, Threesome - F/M/M, post-Season 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-01
Updated: 2016-01-01
Packaged: 2018-05-05 11:50:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5374223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perdiccas/pseuds/perdiccas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nothing is inevitable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Beautiful Mess

**Author's Note:**

  * For [addandsubtract](https://archiveofourown.org/users/addandsubtract/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, addandsubtract! :)
> 
> Thanks to A. for beta reading. ♥

“This is a great opportunity for you.”

“I know,” Kala agrees. “And I’m very grateful for it.”

“And your parents?” Rajan asks as he sits in front of her, perched precariously on the edge of his desk. 

She shrugs. “It’s not what they would prefer,” she tells him truthfully, “but they understand how important this move will be for my career.”

“That’s good. That’s good.”He nods his head distractedly. “It’s just...” he continues, his voice softer now, more genuine. “After everything that happened between us, I don’t want you to think I’m sending you away—”

“Oh no, of course not,” she says quickly and emphatically, her eyebrows knitting together in concern. 

“Rajan, I would never—” she insists as Rajan says, “—your work has always been impeccable and I would never...”

Together they trail off into silence. Kala catches Rajan’s eye and they chuckle.

“I didn’t think this would be so awkward,” he confesses.

Kala shakes her head ruefully. “I don’t think it could be any other way. For a little while at least.”

Rajan takes a deep breath. “Perhaps you’re right.”

He stands and smoothes down his shirt. Kala stands too, tucking the fat envelope of necessary documents under her arm.

At the door, Rajan pauses. 

“I mean it,” he says one last time, before he opens the door. “You are, and always have been, a great asset to this company. My father and I disagree on many things, but we have always agreed on that. This secondment is not something I would have offered to you if I did not think you were the best candidate for the job. The European lab is lucky to have you.”

“Thank you,” Kala says sincerely. She’s surprised that after everything this should still feel so difficult. “Goodbye Rajan.”

 

The lights on the plane are dimmed. Kala sits with a blanket tucked around her. The flight is not as crowded as it could have been, especially here in business class, and she has the whole row to herself. 

She sets the little TV screen to show their journey’s progress. She watches as the plane symbol inches forward along a dotted line that spans the globe. Their current speed seems incredible, impossible even when the clouds outside the half-closed window shade appear to hardly move at all. 

Kala turns away from the window to find the seat beside her occupied.

“Capheus,” she says softly, a smile on her lips.

“I don’t think it will ever stop feeling amazing,” he tells her frankly, “to be so far above the world.”

His smile is irrepressible, and in the face of it, Kala can feel own grow smaller, tighter and more brittle.

“Ah,” he says gently, “but there is always something pulling us back down to earth...” And when she doesn’t answer, he presses, “You’re not excited for this trip?”

“It isn’t that kind of trip,” she explains. “I’m travelling for business, not pleasure.”

She watches as he studies the map screen too, his gaze tracing the route from Bombay to Berlin. He looks at her again with his eyebrows raised. “No pleasure at all?”

She knows what he means. She can feel it in her core. Capheus must feel it too: the warmth, the longing, the body wracking pain. She shakes her head sharply, quelling the memory of Wolfgang, bloodied and desperate, as quickly as it comes to her. “No,” she says sadly. “I don’t think so. None at all.”

By now the tiny drawing of a plane is over halfway there. She reaches out and touches the screen, as if it would bump its nose against her finger and turn around. As if doing so would take her home.

Capheus looks at her with an anguished expression, her every emotion written plainly on his face. 

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she admits. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

Capheus rallies. “If you don’t know what you’re doing,” he says with an encouraging grin, “then how can you say you cannot do it?”

“No,” she whines, half in exasperation, and half amused despite herself. It’s the kind of wordplay her father would appreciate and that itself buoys her mood and drags her down again, thinking of what she’s left behind. “What if I’ve made a mistake,” she whispers. “My family is so far away already.”

“Then why didn’t you stay?” 

“I...” Kala starts. She thinks of Rajan, of the weight of her wedding attire, of her hands in his... “I could not stay.”

“Then you’ve done the right thing,” Capheus says simply. 

He has no authority to make that pronouncement, nor enough knowledge of the circumstances for Kala to trust that his judgement is true and yet, in hearing him say it, she begins to feel better, bit by bit.

“They’ll miss you,” he continues, “but love is not like a dog on a chain. There are no limits to how far it can travel. Your family isn’t lost to you just because they’re out of sight.”

It’s a beautiful thought. Kala opens her mouth to say as much when she notices Capheus’s far away expression. There’s something melancholy in his eyes that Kala doesn’t feel is her place to pry into. She is not the only one, perhaps, with family that is out of sight but never, ever out of mind. 

She places her hand on his forearm and gives a gentle squeeze, comforting him as he had her. When she draws her hand away, they are no longer on the plane.

Although it had been night when she had visited before, the small room illuminated only by the flatscreen’s glow, Kala recognises Capheus’s home right away. In the daylight, it is warm and earthy. 

She inhales and the air is tinged with the metallic taste of sunlight bouncing off the corrugated iron roof. In front of them, a woman – undoubtedly Capheus’s mother – stirs a pot and sings.

Slowly, the scent of spices permeates the room. Cloves and cardamom, Kala recognises, but there are many more layers she can’t identify, all of which leave her mouth watering. 

Her stomach grumbles, loud and longingly. 

She gasps in surprise. Capheus laughs, his hand on his own stomach as it echoes the sentiment.

His mother jumps. Her singing cuts off abruptly. “What are you doing there, Capheus?” she chides as she spins around to face them. “You shouldn’t sneak up on people.”

“I’m sorry, Mama,” he says, “I couldn’t help it. The smell of your cooking is far too tantalizing.”

Capheus kisses his mother on her forehead and winks in Kala’s direction. Kala smothers a giggle behind her hands as his mother shakes her head dismissively, “Yes, yes, Capheus, but surely you are not too tantalized to get some plates on the table?”

“Ah, yes,” he says amicably. “I think I can manage that, just for you.”

Kala steps to the side so that Capheus can take the plates from a shelf. A cluster of pill bottles sits nearby. It isn’t her intention to snoop, but as Capheus lays the table, Kala’s gaze skims over the labels. She would not be very good at her job if she didn’t recognise the drugs at once.

Across the room, Capheus meets her eyes. Kala looks again at his mother, seeing now what she did not recognise before: the tiredness in her movement, her sunken cheeks. Capheus pulls out a chair for her, “Sit, sit,” he insists. “I’ll bring the pot.”

Kala watches them for a moment longer. The pungent spiciness becomes the acrid scent of coffee and she is on the plane again, alone.

An air hostess smiles down at her. “Good morning. Are you ready for breakfast?”

 

The lab in Berlin is not so different to what Kala is used to and the work is much the same.

She is not the only one new to Berlin. The Rasal company’s recent mergers have brought together pharmacists from as far afield as Beijing, Melbourne and Dubai. Whereas before, she understood German as intuitively as if it were her mother tongue, now, the language confuses and confounds her. Around the lab, she speaks in English. They all do, in a symphony of accents. It is science, though, clear and precise, that is their true _lingua franca_. 

The apartment allotted to her by the company is compact and sterile and nothing like a home. Kala feels desolate within its walls. She pushed for this job when it was announced, a chance to advance her career and move beyond the office rumours regarding her failed engagement. That doesn’t mean the change comes easy. Her heart is heavy, not just with a longing for her family, but with Will’s painful absence too. 

She meanders aimlessly along the city streets for hours. Anything to escape the loneliness of being indoors. 

She doesn’t look for Wolfgang. She keeps her eyes on the pavement as she walks or up high, searching for blue sky among the grey city air. She doesn’t consider what she’ll say if she ever sees him. She never wonders what he’d say to her.

For all that she’s pushed him from her mind and wrapped her heart in memories of home, it takes just one week of evening walks to find herself outside the hospital. It is a large, sprawling building, not unlike the one where she’d sat at Manendra’s bedside. 

Before the anger and the vengeance and the blood, this is where it had all begun. She starts to walk away but hesitates, turning back. Before everything else, there had been pain.

Kala squares her shoulders and walks inside. 

Under the sharp, fluorescent lights, she navigates the corridors by instinct. Each white hallway is identical to the next but still she finds her way. She’s certain she has found the correct room – three stories up, just beyond the ICU – but the person inside is not who she has come to see. She stares listlessly at the curtained observation window, unsure what to do.

There are worse things than dying, that was what Wolfgang had said, but with the possibility so palpably close, Kala can’t imagine how that could be. She remembers the pain she had felt before, at the sight of Felix unconscious and unresponsive. It was a wound so deep, it felt as if a part of Wolfgang had been carved away, as if a jagged knife had scraped messily along the bone. It seems impossible to think he could have survived Felix’s death. It seems impossible to think he could have suffered such a loss without shockwaves of grief radiating through them all. 

Kala closes her eyes to calm her racing thoughts. She breathes in deeply through her nose and out through her mouth. When she opens them again, Wolfgang stands beside her.

She startles. He puts a heavy hand on her shoulder and leans in close. 

“What are you doing here?” he demands. His gaze bores into her but doesn’t linger, darting up and down the hallway, nervously. 

“My job...” she says, faltering in the face of his scowl, falling into unfinished half sentences he’ll have to piece together himself. “I was worried. I wanted to check on Felix.”

“Felix?” Confusion, and something else, softens the frown lines on his forehead. “Felix isn’t here,” he says quickly. “It wasn’t safe. I had to move him. You shouldn’t be here either.”

She’d almost forgotten how hot her emotions could run in Wolfgang’s company, but instead of passion racing through her veins, it’s a smouldering anger that leaves her voice shaking. 

“Not safe?” she parrots accusingly. Kala lowers her voice to a hiss. “I thought everything you’ve done was to keep yourself safe. How much further must you go?”

Wolfgang’s eyes go wide, and he flinches back away from her, his hand falling uselessly from her shoulder. He opens his mouth as if to argue but something in his expression shifts. “Think of me what you will. The worst of your imagination is probably not bad enough. But there is no one left who could hurt Felix. No one, except you if you make a scene that gets people asking questions.”

A harried voice interrupts them. Kala turns. The nurse speaks again in German.

Kala frowns. “I’m sorry, I don’t speak...”

In brisk, clipped English the nurse repeats, “Visiting hours are over. You can come back in the morning.” 

Wolfgang walks with her through the halls but it’s only once they’re through the doors that he asks, “The cafe in the rain?”

Kala nods, remembering.

“Meet me there, right away.”

 

Kala wraps her arms around herself, anxiously waiting among the empty tables in the courtyard.

When Wolfgang arrives, he’s juggling an armful of food. A thousand words press at her lips: old worries that have sat in her belly, twisted and souring for weeks; new ones that burn freshly on the tip of her tongue. When she goes to him, Kala says nothing, taking some of the foil wrapped parcels from him instead.

“I didn’t know what kind of falafel you like,” he says with a one shouldered shrug. “So I got you one with everything.”

“Thanks—” she starts, but he turns on his heel, and she has to scramble to catch up, not knowing if he’s even heard her.

“We’re late,” he explains, leading the way through the darkening streets. “Felix will be wondering where I am.”

 

The private clinic is an imposing redbrick building with a small brass nameplate beside the closed door. Wolfgang leans on the buzzer with his shoulder – his hands still overflowing with food – and speaks in a low voice.

If there are visiting hours here, they aren’t tightly enforced. 

When they get to his door, Felix is sitting up in bed. His eyes are wide and glued to the TV. Their arrival catches his attention and he talks rapidly in German, gesturing for them to hurry up and get inside.

Wolfgang laughs. In English he says, “I know, I know, I’m sorry. Did we miss anything important?”

“Only the bullshit interviews,” Felix says switching fluidly to English too. “Ah, be careful,” he says with an exaggerated frown when Wolfgang dumps the food around him. “You’ll get hummus on the sheets and they’re going to start for real in a minute.”

He starts picking through the various parcels, finding one he likes the weight and smell of and peeling back the foil. He takes a huge bite of the falafel and moans in satisfaction. “Come in, come in,” he says to Kala, “You can’t see the TV from all the way over there.”

“I...” Kala is at a loss for words in the face of such a domestic and oddly charming scene. “Okay.”

She draws up a chair. Wolfgang nudges Felix over and settles in next to him on top of the blankets. From his vantage point on the bed, Felix looks down at Kala, watching as she unwraps the food Wolfgang had handed to her earlier.

“Ach, Wolfie, what are you doing?” he says with a disappointed click of his tongue. “You don’t want that one,” he says to Kala confidently. “Too much aubergine. It ruins the whole flavour balance.” He wiggles his fingers over the remaining food and picks out another falafel. “Here, trust me, take this one instead.”

Wolfgang rolls his eyes. “Since when are you a food critic?”

The pita bread overflows with slices of pink spicy pickled ginger and a dusting of bright green coriander leaves. Kala takes a bite. “It’s good,” she says. “Really good.”

Felix elbows Wolfgang in his side. “See? I’m Felix, by the way,” he adds for Kala’s benefit.

“Kala,” she replies.

Felix raises his eyebrows speculatively. 

“Kala,” he repeats slowly. He looks pointedly between her and Wolfgang. 

Wolfgang coughs, like maybe he tried to swallow too much at once. “Yes,” he says. “Felix this is Kala. Now be quiet, the adverts are over.”

She can tell that Felix is dying to ask more, to find out who she is and why she’s here. She can feel Wolfgang’s relief when he holds his tongue as requested instead.

On the TV, a man stands on a stage alone. The lights dim and the strings of a song Kala recognises from the radio start to swell.

“Do you like Spotlight?” Felix whispers to her.

She shakes her head. “I’ve never seen it before.”

Felix nods in understanding. “I used to be like you, but you wouldn’t believe the kind of shit Wolfgang gets me hooked on.”

Never in a million years is that something Kala would have expected. 

“Really?!” she blurts incredulously. Then lowering her voice so as not to drown out the singing, “Wolfgang, is that true?”

He doesn’t look away from the performance. “I like music.”

Kala studies his profile, and the wonder on his face at the song’s crescendo. Softly she says, “Me too.”

 

When the show is over and they have finished eating, Wolfgang starts to tidy the bed, gathering up the foil wrappers and used serviettes. Felix shuts off the TV and turns to Kala.

“Is this your first time in Berlin?”

That’s more difficult to answer than she expected. “Kind of?”

Felix looks confused but he doesn’t press her. “Are you here for long?”

That one’s easier. “Six months. I’m here on a work assignment.”

“And your husband doesn’t mind you being gone so long?” Wolfgang interrupts. He’s holding handfuls of rubbish, his eyes boring into her.

Felix draws in a sharp, scandalised breath. Caught in between them, he sinks back against the pillows. 

Kala holds Wolfgang’s gaze. “I don’t have a husband.”

“Ah,” Wolfgang scoffs. He turns and throws everything he’s holding forcefully into the bin. “How many more times will the wedding be postponed?”

In her lap, Kala clenches her hands.

“There isn’t going to be a wedding,” she says clearly, holding her head high. “Things never should have gotten that far,” she concedes, “but nothing is inevitable. I broke it off.”

Wolfgang looks at her for a moment longer, and then looks away. It seems like he might say something else but he’s distracted by a man walking past the door.

“Excuse me,” he says to them abruptly. “I have to speak with the doctor.”

Felix stares after him as he goes, shaking his head in bewilderment. He turns to Kala and his expression changes to something softer. 

“Hey, don’t mind him,” he says gently. “Wolfgang always thinks he knows everything about everything. He never takes it well when he finds out he doesn’t really know anything at all.”

Kala laughs weakly. She looks up at Felix and he gives her an encouraging smile. “I’m sorry about your wedding,” he offers.

“I’m not.”

This time, it’s Felix who laughs, awkwardly trailing off into silence. He leans back against the pillows and closes his eyes. He looks tired. Felix opens his eyes a sliver again and studies her, sidelong. 

“So, how did you and Wolfgang meet?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know how to explain it. We have a connection.”

Felix nods as if that answers everything instead of being another, bigger mystery even Kala can’t begin to understand.

“You know,” Felix says slowly, “Wolfie said he wanted to take a trip to India. I wonder how different things would have been if he had.”

She imagines Wolfgang on the streets of Bombay, solid and real. She wonders if it would have changed anything at all. She looks at Felix and listens to the rhythmic beeping of the machines in the room, and although she knows the answer, she asks, “What happened instead?”

“He saved my life. A thousand times over.”

“Then things were better this way.”

She covers her mouth with her hand, shocked at her own unhesitating certainty. The price of Felix’s life is still brutally clear in her mind, but she can’t bring herself to take back her words.

He smiles a sad half-smile. “Better for me, maybe. But what about him?”

Kala remembers the last time she was at Felix’s bedside. She remembers Wolfgang’s pain. She reaches out to Felix, and thinks that maybe his wasn’t the only life saved that day. 

He puts his hand in hers and squeezes. “You said you had a connection? You and Wolfgang?”

Kala nods. 

“It must run deep because I don’t know of anyone else he’d trust enough to bring here.”

In the doorway, Wolfgang clears his throat.

Felix and Kala pull their hands apart. She doesn’t know how long he’s been standing there. She doesn’t know how much he’s overheard.

“What now?” asks Felix. “What did Herr Doktor say?”

“One more test. A few more days of observation. He’s in a hurry, he’ll come and check on you another time.” Wolfgang spits the words dismissively. “I think he’d hold you here indefinitely if he thought he could get something out of it.”

He’s trying to sound nonchalant, but Kala can feel the waves of anxiety rolling off him. She thinks of Capheus’s mother, of how well one can look while being deeply sick inside. She stands and gestures to the chart hanging at the end of Felix’s bed.

“I could take a look, if you don’t mind?”

Felix perks up. “You’re a nurse?” he asks, waggling his eyebrows salaciously. 

She laughs. “No, I work for a pharmaceutical company, but I know enough to read a chart.”

Wolfgang hands it to her. She can’t read German, but there’s nothing in the list of medications prescribed that they should be worried about. Not that she blames the doctor for being cautious. 

“Your body has been through a lot,” she explains. “It’s so easy to develop a secondary infection, especially at home where things are never as sanitary as in a hospital.”

“There, you see,” Felix says easily. “You worry too much.”

Wolfgang shakes his head. “Something’s up. I don’t trust him.”

Felix snorts. “You don’t trust anyone. What else is new?”

Kala puts the chart back and catches sight of the clock on the wall. It’s later than she thought. “I have to go,” she says reluctantly. “Or I’ll never make it to work in the morning.”

“Wolfgang will walk you home,” Felix volunteers.

“No,” she says quickly. “Please. I’ll be fine on my own.”

Felix watches them as she and Wolfgang say an awkward goodbye. Just as she’s about to leave, he says, “You know, I always thought internet dating wasn’t for me. But if this is how it works out, I may have to give it a try.”

Wolfgang blanches, “That’s not what this is...”

“It isn’t like that,” Kala agrees.

Felix narrows his eyes shrewdly. “Isn’t it?”

 

Kala intends to visit again the next day, but out of the blue she’s swamped at work. Struggling to juggle what feels like a million deadlines, she is struck with the worry that maybe Rajan had been going easy on her. She’s always been confident at work – a confidence she used to be sure matched her competency – and the sudden surge of self-doubt hits her in the gut. The flip side gnaws at her too. Despite Rajan’s assurances that he held no grudge against her, she can’t shake the idea that her career will be made more difficult, deliberately, now that she has rejected the boss’s son. 

She works late and comes in early for three days straight before the crush finally tapers off. It isn’t until she leaves work that day that Kala realises she and Wolfgang and Felix haven’t swapped phone numbers. It isn’t something she’s used to thinking about with someone who can read her thoughts. 

She makes her own way to the clinic unannounced and arrives early enough that the doors are still wide open. She expects to be asked to sign in but the nurse at the desk waves her through, seeming to recognise Kala, even if Kala doesn’t recognise her in return.

Felix is asleep. Wolfgang sits beside him, slumped low in one chair with his feet up on another. The TV is murmuring in the background. 

A shy smile flickers on his face when he sees her. “I was wondering if you’d come back.”

“Work has been...” Kala grimaces apologetically. 

Wolfgang nods. He takes his feet off the chair and swipes his hand across the seat to clean it off for her. She suddenly feels shy to be practically alone with him. She plays with her hair, hiding her grateful smile behind it.

“Felix will be sad that he missed you.” 

In sleep, Felix’s mouth is slack and his hair falls into his eyes. “Is he well?” she asks.

“Ja,” Wolfgang says but he doesn’t sound sure. “The new drugs make him sleep more.”

Kala wrinkles her nose at the mention of a switch. The drugs Felix had been on work well; she’s read the research. “Did the doctor come and run tests?”

Wolfgang rubs his forehead in frustration. “No. That man is like a ghost, impossible to pin down. I haven’t seen him in days.”

Missing check-ups, changing medications without cause, no clear communication: the whole situation strikes Kala as breathtakingly unethical. She’s about to say as much when she catches herself. In keeping company with a murderer, this is perhaps what she must learn to expect. 

She can’t dwell on that right now. 

Instead she turns her mind to practicalities. She reaches for Felix’s chart, without asking permission this time.

The old drug and the new drug are merely two ways to treat the same thing. There is no reason to change from one to the other except in cases of allergy or resistance. Excessive lethargy is a known side effect of the current one, though. Useful, Kala thinks, if the doctor has a reason for wanting Felix stuck in bed. 

“Do you think he wants more money?” she asks.

“Maybe.” Wolfgang’s expression is unreadable. “Maybe he’s getting cold feet.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that maybe it’s best if you didn’t visit again.”

“What?” She’s hurt but is careful not to wake Felix by raising her voice. “Is that what you really want?”

“This isn’t something you should be mixed up in.”

“Too late,” she says bitterly. “Even if I wanted to walk away, the nurses already know my face.”

Wolfgang huffs a long, defeated breath. The same sense of insecurity Kala felt at work begins to rise in her throat. She wants to help, but nothing about her feels strong enough, or clever enough, or as ruthless as maybe she’ll need to be. When Wolfgang looks at her, she sees the same sense of inadequacy echoed a thousand-fold in his eyes.

He scrubs his fingers through his hair. “I thought this would be over,” he says hopelessly. “I took care of every loose end.”

Kala’s eyes fly wide. Her nose flares. “You killed I don’t know how many people and you thought that would be the end of it, instead of a terrible beginning?”

Wolfgang makes a noise that should be a laugh but there’s no humour in it. 

“Would you ever rob a bank?”

“What? Of course not.”

“Then you take after your father and I take after mine.”

She feels her cheeks heat in anger. “Don’t act like there is nothing else you could have done.”

“Maybe that’s true. But you know as well as anyone it’s not an easy lesson to learn, that our choices are not bound by those our parents have made. Besides,” he adds, “look around you. Look where you are. Can you really say free will leads any of us to better decisions?”

“I have faith that if we can make mistakes, we can also make amends.”

“Is that why your gods have put you here in Berlin?” Wolfgang sneers. “To make amends for leading Rajan on?”

She inhales a shaky breath. His words sting. She knows he intended them too. She refuses to back down. 

“No,” she says simply. “I’m here because it’s never too late to start again.”

Wolfgang leans forward with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. “The police are watching the lockshop. The hospital flagged Felix’s name when I pulled him out of there. The diamonds are too hot to sell. Tell me, Kala, how can I possibly start again?”

She puts her hand on his leg reassuringly. “I don’t know,” she tells him. “But paying a man you don’t trust to keep your secrets isn’t the answer.”

 

Kala tries to concentrate on the titration she’s working on, but for the first time since she called her marriage off, she finds herself unintentionally drifting into Wolfgang’s mind and space. She spends a moment with him as he haggles down the price of a car; five minutes with him walking through a newly rented apartment. In stop motion flashes, she watches him create a new world for them from scratch, all without ever leaving her desk. 

Instead of the soul-aching self-doubt she has been feeling, Kala feels determined to take charge of her own destiny. She doesn’t know if it’s Wolfgang’s mood rubbing off on her, or if at last, in dark and dreary Berlin, Ganesha’s influence is reaching her and by extension, Wolfgang, too. 

She sits at her workbench, finishing up some paperwork, when it all comes crashing down.

Her boss and his boss above him stride through the lab with an entourage of flunkies. Among them, Kala thinks she sees Felix’s doctor.

“Wolfgang,” she whispers, unsure. “Is that...?”

“Yes.” He stands behind her, his voice in her ear. 

She ducks her head, pretending to be engrossed in what she’s doing, all the while watching them out of the corner of her eye. “But what is he doing here?”

“Who?”

Kala startles and spins around. She comes face to face with one of her co-workers. Terry holds up his hands in joking surrender. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. Could I take a look at that report?”

Her eyes dart from the doctor – distracted by whatever her boss is showing him – and back to Terry. “Yes, of course.” She hands it over. “Do you know what’s going on?”

Terry gives a disinterested shake of his head. “Some private contract is on the table so they’re showing us off like a dog-and-pony show. It’s all hush-hush. Supposed to be big money in it but how much is going to end up in our pockets?”

“This is bad,” Wolfgang says. 

Kala blinks and she’s in a sparsely furnished apartment with him. A new place. A new start. They can move Felix in as soon as he’s discharged. Wolfgang grabs a set of keys from the table. 

“Don’t you understand?” he says, a mounting sense of panic in his voice. “You can’t pay off a man who has a deal this large in his back pocket. I don’t know what’s going on, but we need to get Felix out of there now.”

“You’re on the other side of Berlin,” she reminds him. It had been her idea: the further away from their old stomping grounds, the better.

“I’ll be quick,” he promises as he runs out of the door.

“Oh no,” Kala covers her mouth with her fist, stifling a cry of desperation.

Terry looks up from the file. “What is it?” he asks, concerned. “Are you alright?”

“Yes,” she says, thinking quickly. “It’s just that I’m so behind with everything. What if they come over here and ask to see what I’m working on? If _I_ am the reason the company loses this contract, I’ll lose my job.”

“I don’t think it would come to that.”

“You don’t understand,” she insists. “I was supposed to marry Rajan Rasal.”

Terry looks at her blankly. She grits her teeth and sends a silent apology to Rajan for what she’s about to say.

“Rajan Rasal. The son of the CEO? I called off the wedding and I know it sounds terrible, but I can’t give him another reason to be displeased with me. This job is very important to me.”

Terry looks floored by the sudden rush of information. He flicks through the pages he’s holding, and looks around the room anxiously. “Listen, it’s fine. I’ll cover for you. Go home. I’ll tell everyone you weren’t feeling well. I’ll email you when the coast is clear.”

“Thank you,” she says, already gathering her things. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

He laughs softly, shepherding her towards the lifts. “Don’t worry about it. You can return the favour next time I call in with a hangover.”

 

She arrives at the clinic before Wolfgang does. On first glance nothing seems out of the ordinary, and she starts to think they’ve overreacted. She’s almost at Felix’s room when she hears the front doors slam open. Loud voices arguing follow. She ducks into an empty room and eavesdrops through the cracked door.

“Detectives,” Wolfgang translates for her. “The nurses are stalling, saying they cannot disturb the patients. You have to get Felix out of here before they decide to come in anyway.”

“Get Felix,” Nomi agrees. 

Kala isn’t surprised their combined panic has called them to her. If anyone is attuned to the needs of hospital escapes, it’s her. 

Nomi types hurriedly on her computer. “I’ll find a back way out of this place.”

Kala’s heart pounds. In the clinic, she’s all alone.

Holding her breath, she eases the door open. She creeps down the hallway as quickly as she can, grabbing a wheelchair and bringing it with her. 

“Kala,” Felix greets her.

She winces, holding her finger to her lips to shush him. He clamps his mouth shut and looks warily around the room. He’s chipper, alert, unlike the day before.

“What’s going on?” he whispers urgently.

Kala brings the wheelchair to his bedside.

“The police are in the lobby,” she explains as she shuts off the monitors around him. “Wolfgang is on his way but we need to get out of here before they find you.”

“Okay, okay,” he agrees. He pushes back the sheets and swings his legs over the edge of the bed. Kala steadies him as he stands, helping him down into the wheelchair. 

She grabs the chart from the end of the bed and wedges it in there with him.

“Wait!” he cries softly when she starts to push towards the door.

He takes hold of the wheels and rolls himself towards a chest of drawers. He rifles through it. Kala watches the clock tick in time to her racing heartbeat. Felix pulls out a pair of obnoxiously bright shoes and makes a quietly triumphant noise. “There! We can go now.”

The shoes are blinding. They’re bound to draw attention they can’t afford. Kala grabs a blanket from the bed and throws it over Felix’s lap, the chart and the shoes. 

“This way.” 

Nomi leads them through a maze of corridors deep into a section of the clinic Kala hasn’t seen before. 

“There.” She points to a heavy fire door ahead of them. With a click that sounds too loud in the otherwise silent hall, the electronic lock releases and the door swings outward. 

“I disabled the fire alarms. No one will notice it’s open until they get a foot patrol down here. Go straight out the back and hang tight. I’ll let Wolfgang know where to find you.”

Instead, Kala turns to the right. She pushes the dispensary door open with her shoulders, walking backwards and pulling Felix after her. 

“What are you doing?” he hisses to her. “That door is open. There’s no one around. This is our chance!”

Kala shakes her head, leaving him in the middle of the room. “You need these drugs,” she insists, pulling handfuls of vials from the shelves. “We can’t leave without them.”

“I didn’t even take them this morning,” Felix counters. She presses the bottles into his hands and goes back for more. “I’m serious. They make me sleep too much.”

“And how much pain are you in right now?”

She passes him a box of syringes and dressings for his wounds. Felix shoves them all under the blanket, vials clanking where he’s tucked the drugs inside his shoes. He wrinkles his nose. “It won’t be so bad once we’re out of here. So let’s go.”

She grabs the wheelchair’s handles and pushes. Felix gasps.

Kala ducks down quickly, backing them up behind a table. A uniformed officer with a heavy gait walks down the hall to the open fire exit. He pulls it shut. Speaking into a walkie-talkie, he stands guard, in front of the door.

“What now?” Felix whispers.

Kala looks around the dispensary. There’s another door in the far corner. She inches over to it, keeping as out of sight as possible. 

“It leads outside,” Nomi confirms as they stare at it. “But you need a physical key to open it.”

Kala runs her fingers over the silver lock.

She glances back at Felix. He’s laden down with boxes and bottles and even if he could stand up without causing a cacophonous crash that would lead the police right to them, would he have the strength to get them out of here?

“Let me.”

Wolfgang studies the door critically. Then instead of standing next to her, he _is_ her. Kala understands intuitively how to pick the lock. She takes a pair of bobby pins from her hair and bends one open with her teeth. 

She hears the clinking of glass on glass as the medicine bottles rattle. She can feel Felix wheel himself closer to them. Wolfgang eases the pins into the lock.

“I knew there was more to you than meets the eye,” Felix breathes, impressed. “Hairpins. You don’t see that often anymore.” 

Wolfgang glances back at him and smiles. “A classic,” he agrees.

Felix’s eyes go wide.

“I thought you didn’t speak German,” he says, low and wary. “What’s really going on here?”

Kala’s heart catches in her throat. Her hands – Wolfgang’s hands – stutter in the lock. “Felix, please,” Wolfgang pleads in Kala’s voice. “You have to trust me.”

Felix retreats further away. The vials clink again but louder this time. They all freeze and listen but the officer doesn’t seem to have heard.

“Felix,” Wolfgang says again, “ _No one in this world can you trust. Not men, not women, not beasts. This..._ ” He pulls one of the hairpins from the lock and holds it between them. “ _This you can trust._ ”

It means nothing to Kala but everything to Felix. He shifts uncomfortably in the wheelchair and stares at her with an uncomprehending look on his face. “...Wolfie?” 

Wolfgang twists the remaining pin in the door. It unlocks with a pop. 

Kala steers them out of the clinic and towards Wolfgang’s waiting car. 

 

They take a long, meandering route to Felix and Wolfgang’s new apartment. Kala sits in the front and Felix sprawls in the back. Wolfgang’s eyes dart restlessly back and forth in the rear view mirror until he’s sure they aren’t being followed.

Somewhere in all the commotion, Felix ended up with Kala’s bobby pin. He twirls it between his fingers. “I guess you two really didn’t meet online...”

“I told you we didn’t,” Wolfgang says gruffly. 

Felix nods. “I know.” 

He rearranges himself in the backseat. His eyebrows draw together in a pained expression. Kala remembers what he told her, that he didn’t take his medication this morning, and she’s suddenly very aware of every bump and dip in the road. She’s about to suggest that they should pull over when Felix stops fiddling with the hairpin and clenches it in his fist.

“I didn’t even know Kala existed until you brought her to the clinic.” He stares accusingly at the back of Wolfgang’s head. “And you told her about _Conan_?”

He sounds hurt. Betrayed.

“No,” Wolfgang denies it immediately. He looks away from the road for long enough to look at Felix over his shoulder. “It’s not like that.”

Conan was the name on Felix’s file but she can’t piece that together with the sudden tension in the car.

“I don’t even know who Conan is,” she says.

Felix scowls at her and shakes his head, like she’s told him a lie so outrageous it offends him.

“It’s a movie,” Wolfgang explains. Only that doesn’t explain anything at all. 

“I don’t know it,” Kala insists. “I’m more of a Bollywood fan.”

“ _Not men, not women, not beasts,_ indeed,” Felix shoots back at her, repeating what Wolfgang had said to him before. 

“I really don’t know what that means...” 

“Then why did you say it?!” 

Felix is getting agitated. Kala worries he’ll hurt himself. She and Wolfgang catch each other’s eyes and an understanding flows between them. 

“She didn’t,” Wolfgang says, as gently as he can. “You know she didn’t. I did.”

 

“This is amazing,” Felix declares. It’s the fourth or fifth time he’d said it already and Kala knows he isn’t referring to the motley assortment of furniture.

“No but seriously,” he says, looking at her with absolute wonder as she tapes a piece of gauze on his arm where she’d injected him. 

“This pain killer shouldn’t make you sleep as much,” she tells him.

It does nothing to divert the path of his conversation. 

“Why have we been wasting our time safe cracking?” he asks Wolfgang incredulously. “Think of the killing we could be making in Vegas! Imagine it now, Wolfie: you at the table; Kala in a skin-tight, shimmery dress feeding you everyone else’s cards.”

Kala snorts, caught between amused and horrified. “I don’t think so.”

She stands and peels off a pair of latex gloves, throwing them in the bin.

“Besides,” Wolfgang says sincerely. “We’re turning over a new leaf, remember? No more of that.”

“Oh yes,” Felix says. He throws himself back on the couch with a melodramatically disappointed sigh. “I forgot...” He perks up again and tries, “Not even one more for the road?”

“No,” she and Wolfgang say in unison. She’s trying to be stern about it but she can’t help smiling at Felix’s boundless excitement. It really is a miracle, this connection they have, and it unlocks a part of her heart she didn’t know she had been holding back to able to talk about it. 

“Tch,” he clicks his tongue. “So much wasted potential.”

“Wasted,” Wolfgang says sarcastically, “on getting your ass out of trouble.”

“Speaking of trouble,” Nomi interrupts. “Something really weird is going on.”

The three of them stand in Nomi’s living room. Whereas it’s dark already in Berlin, through the windows, Kala can see the sun high in the sky over New York. 

“I hacked into the German police database to see what was going on, but there’s nothing.” She turns her laptop towards them but Kala can’t make sense of what they’re looking at. “The officers are legit so it wasn’t a fake raid, but there’s no report, no dispatch notes, no case number. It’s like it never happened.

“There has to be more to this,” Nomi tells them. “We just have to figure it out.”

As if on cue, Kala’s phone vibrates on the table. She sweeps it up. It’s from Terry in the office. 

She reads aloud:

“False alarm. You can relax. I guess the deal was a sure thing. They’ve started bringing in boxes and boxes of files. Still no concrete info on what it’s even about except they haven’t hired anyone who worked on it before. They’ve all moved out of the country.”

“Everyone who worked on the project previously has left the country?” Wolfgang’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise.

“It sounds like Herr Doktor had more to worry about with the police than we do,” Felix adds.

Nomi touches Kala on the arm. “You have to find out what’s in those files.”

Kala emails Terry back. “Thank you. Sorry about earlier. I’ll see you in the morning.”

 

Her body is exhausted from everything that’s happened today but her mind is restless, and by the time Kala’s out of the shower and dressed in her pyjamas, she can’t settle down to sleep. The company apartment is as bereft of personality as it was when she first moved in. It always feels cold, regardless of the actual temperature.

She curls up on the couch and flicks through the TV channels. A familiar theme tune grabs her attention. She smiles as Spotlight begins. On stage is the same singer they’d seen on the show before. 

Kala turns instinctively to Wolfgang. The TV is blaring in their apartment too, and she gasps.

He and Felix are entwined in a tender kiss. Wolfgang opens his eyes to find her staring. Her jaw may as well be on the floor. “Kala.”

“Felix, actually.” Felix chuckles and it startles Kala into standing up. 

“I’m... I’m sorry,” she stutters. 

“Kala, please.” Wolfgang extracts himself gently from Felix and reaches for her. “Stay.” 

She turns away from him.

Emotion churns in her stomach: shock, embarrassment, naivety for not seeing their relationship for what it is. But something holds her here, something more than Wolfgang’s plea. As much as she thinks she must go at once, she can’t seem to leave.

“Kala’s here?” Felix asks, confused. And then with more uncertainty, “She’s going?”

Wolfgang takes her hand and even with what she’s just seen, she clings to it. He tugs at her. She turns back to them, her free hand moving to cover her cringing face.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt...” 

It doesn’t matter that she can’t find the words to finish her sentence because Wolfgang kisses her too. 

Felix breathes the barest sound. “Oh.”

Wolfgang’s mouth on hers is gentle, tentative and questioning. When she puts her hands on his chest and pushes him away, he doesn’t hold her to him.

She touches her fingertips to her lips. “How can...?” she starts, glancing at Felix and back to Wolfgang. “This is impossible...”

“That looks weird as hell,” Felix announces. His voice is filled with awe, though, like he’s seen a miracle, not an aberration. He kneels up on the couch, looking in Kala’s direction but never quite at her. “I can’t see you,” he says to her, “Can you see me?”

“Yes,” she says. There’s a missed beat and it’s clear that he can’t hear her.

Wolfgang intercedes. 

“She’s right here.” He guides Felix’s hand to her arm but there’s no touch, no contact between them. “She can hear you, I promise.”

“And understand? Even though we’re speaking German?”

Kala giggles.

Wolfgang grins in return without seeming to know why. “What?”

“What?” Felix echoes.

“To me, we’re all speaking Hindi.”

Wolfgang relays her words to an amazed Felix. “How’s my accent?” he asks.

“It’s good,” Kala assures him, hit by the wonder of it all herself. “It’s brilliant.”

Felix steadies himself against Wolfgang’s back, his chin hooked over Wolfgang’s shoulder. He’s still looking in her general direction when he speaks. “You can see what Wolfgang sees. And you hear what Wolfgang hears. Wolfgang,” he asks breathily in his ear, “can Kala feel what you feel?”

The sight of it hits her first: Felix’s hand snaking under Wolfgang’s shirt. Wolfgang responds to his touch instinctively, pressing his back to Felix’s front, moving with a subtle undulation of his hips.

Then there’s the heat. It’s a deep, slow burn low in Wolfgang’s belly. It’s a headier, tingling rush of hormones through her core. 

And then, it’s her in Felix’s arms. His hand flits against her stomach. His thumb drags along the waistband of her pyjama pants. For as fragile as he seemed in the clinic bed, against her back, he’s warm and solid. She squirms unintentionally, demandingly, against him.

“Kala?” he asks, unsure.

She turns to him, answering with her mouth on his.

Kala knows what her family would say. She shouldn’t be kissing one man and most definitely not two at once.

But Felix’s hand on her skin – _hands_ now – make it hard to remember why. Wolfgang’s arousal is slower building. To him, Felix’s every touch is a point of familiar affection, a well-remembered longing. For her, every kiss is a novelty. Each breath against her a neck is an unexpected thrill. Her thoughts are scattered but her body doesn’t need her mind to know what to do.

Felix skims his hands higher. He cups her breasts gently and she gasps. Her nipples tighten and the feeling shudders through her. He brushes his fingers, softly, ever so softly, over the hardened points of them, and she groans. She blushes to find herself grinding against him but she kisses him more fiercely for it. Felix rubs his hand between her legs, over her pyjamas, and pulls her tighter to him.

The pleasure of it all is overwhelming. Her eyes fly open to the sight of Wolfgang watching them. His lips are wet and parted. His chest rises and falls in time to his panting breaths. And in the face of such unabashed hunger, she realises her top has risen with Felix’s hands, revealing her chest to Wolfgang. Kala flinches. Self-consciously, she covers herself with her arms, and they switch places.

Now, it’s Kala watching Wolfgang and Felix kiss. 

“Oh my god,” she whispers, enthralled by what they’re doing and mortified that Wolfgang has seen her in such a state. He is more controlled in his movements than she knows she was. He rolls his hips deliberately back against Felix’s groin and presses himself forward into Felix’s cupped palm. 

Felix pulls away from his mouth with a knowing smile. “You kiss differently.”

Kala blushes even more. She sees the colour rise in Wolfgang’s cheeks. 

“It’s okay,” Wolfgang assures her. He leans forward to kiss her while Felix kisses his neck. “You don’t have to do anything. Just watch.”

He groans into her lips. Felix scrapes his teeth along his shoulder. Wolfgang cups her face in his hands. “Just watch,” he repeats against her mouth. “I know you like to watch.”

“Oh god,” Felix moans. His voice is as shaky as his fingers. He plucks at the button of Wolfgang’s jeans and eases down the zipper. Kala’s face burns, but she can’t look away.

She’s seen Wolfgang naked before. In peeks and glances she knows she shouldn’t have stolen. But when Felix hooks his thumb in Wolfgang’s underwear and tugs them down, exposing him for Kala to see, it’s something else entirely. 

Nothing on the internet could have prepared her for this moment.

She steps closer. Felix wraps his hand around Wolfgang. Kala chews her lip, her toes curling in frustration at her obstructed view. And then he starts to move his hand. It’s a feeling that knocks the wind right out of her. It’s a pleasure that pulls from her very centre. Her eyes fly wide with it and she stumbles backward, unprepared for such a roiling surge inside her.

She stumbles backwards, right onto her bed, in her apartment. Alone.

In her mind’s ear, she can hear Wolfgang call her name but she’s too caught up in her own body’s reaction to fathom how to answer him.

 

It’s dark and Kala is wide awake. She rolls over, guilty pulling her hand from where it was, still tucked between her legs. She cocoons herself in the sheets and burrows her head deeper in the pillows, but try as she might, she can’t drift off again. She pries her eyes open in increments, straining to see anything in the darkened room. 

She comes face to face with a man she’s never met before. 

Kala stifles a yelp. She sits up at once, gathering the sheets protectively around her. Now she can see a woman in the bed too, curled up on the other side of the still sleeping man. She turns and there’s yet another man between her and the edge of the bed.

“Shh,” he whispers as she opens her mouth to scream. “It’s okay. It’s me. Relax.”

Lito.

It’s only Lito. But what is she doing in his bed, and with so many other people? 

She sits silently for a moment waiting for her racing heartbeat to calm. “Excuse me,” she whispers awkwardly.

“Yes, of course. Sorry,” Lito stands to make room for her to get out of the bed. 

He’s wearing the tiniest pair of briefs. The fabric clings to his body. Kala does her best not to stare as he leads her out the room.

She tucks her hair behind her ears. “Why am I here?” she asks him.

“I don’t know.” He shrugs his shoulders sleepily. “Did something happen?”

She looks back at the sleeping man and woman. He rolls over, throwing his arm around her body. Their faces nestle close together. Even in their sleep, they leave an empty space in the bed. A perfectly Lito-sized space.

Kala flushes. Her body shivers with the memory of the night before. She knows exactly why there are so many people in Lito’s bed. She looks away. Unease prickles at her skin. 

“Ah,” Lito murmurs knowingly, although she hasn’t even tried to answer his question. “Come on, I know what you need.”

In the kitchen, Kala washes her hands. Lito sets water boiling on the stove. She watches as he drops sticks of cinnamon and star anise into the pot. She stands beside him, breathing in the aromatic steam as it’s released.

“Do you regret it?” he asks her, taking more ingredients from the shelves.

She shakes her head slowly. “No, but...” It’s hard to put how she’s feeling into words. “The way things are here,” she gestures, encompassing everything around her, everything about three people living as one, “This isn’t how things will be for me.”

He’s chopping things now, his knife slicing rhythmically through chocolate and bricks of solid caramel-coloured sugar. “Why not?” he asks. “If that is how you want them to be?”

She laughs softly. It’s an absurd idea. It was an absurd thing to do. Maybe you really can go mad from love because Kala aches that she can never allow herself to be so absurd again. 

“My family,” she starts, reciting her reasons as much for herself as to explain things to him. “My parents. My family’s reputation. I have called off one wedding already. One day, I will marry _one_ man and make it up to them.”

Lito fishes the solid spices from the hot water, hissing through his teeth when he burns his fingers. “Sometimes things hurt, no matter what choice you make.”

He whisks in flour, the chocolate and the sugar. He pours milk from a pitcher into the pot, frothing the mixture together until the kitchen smells rich and sweet and homey. 

“Hernando does the cooking.” Lito fills two mugs. “He loves it. He’s good at it. More than good, Daniella calls him a genius. She’s right. But this is my mother’s recipe. Champurrado,” he explains as he passes a mug to her, “Hot chocolate. It’s like a hug and a kiss in a cup.”

They sip their drinks.

“You have a right to be loved.” Lito’s voice is quiet but fierce. “You have a right to love.”

Kala remembers her parents’ faces when she told them she could not marry Rajan: her mother’s anguish; her father’s confusion. She thinks of the concern in their eyes and the unfaltering warmth of their embrace, and she wonders now if it wasn’t the wedding they mourned, but the love match she’d never made. Her family might not understand who Wolfgang and Felix are to her but they want her to be happy. They always have. 

Lito pours the rest of the hot chocolate. He juggles two more mugs in his hands and walks back to the bedroom, bringing a hug and kiss to the people he loves. 

Kala stands in her own kitchen, a mug of sweet, milky tea in her hands. Sunlight streams in through the windows around her. She looks at the clock and gasps. It’s 7am already and she’s still in her pyjamas.

 

Terry wasn’t kidding in his email when he said there were boxes and files everywhere. The lab is in chaos when Kala arrives, so much so that no one seems to notice she’s late. One of the conference rooms is the obvious centre of activity. There is a constant stream of people in and out, each of them closing the doors firmly behind themselves. No one enters without swiping their ID card first.

She walks past Terry’s desk intending to thank him for covering for her yesterday but it’s been cleaned off. There’s no papers, no files, no sign of the photo of his wife. She has a horrible moment wondering if what happened the day before had ended with him in trouble, when she sees him walking towards the conference room with an armful of files.

“Terry,” she calls to him.

He turns and smiles when he sees her, making a detour to his abandoned desk.

“What happened?” she asks quickly. “Your things... they’re all gone.”

“It’s crazy,” he agrees. “Everything is moving so fast. They came around at the end of the day and reassigned a bunch of us to this new project. I’ll be working on the sixth floor now.” 

“That’s great!” Kala says. As worried as she is about what the doctor’s research could be, she’s genuinely happy for Terry’s promotion. 

He rolls his eyes. He rests the stack of files on the otherwise empty desk and starts counting off on his fingers: “We had to stay a couple of hours late for paperwork. We had to come in early for a briefing, and looking at how much there still is to do, I don’t think I’ll be getting a lunch break anytime soon. Fingers crossed there’s as much money in this stuff as everyone says there will be.”

“But what _is_ this project about? No one will say.”

He makes an apologetic face. “I’m sorry. But it’s all on a strictly need to know basis. If the pay’s good though,” he offers, “I’ll put in a good word for you the next time they bring new people in.”

It isn’t what she wants to hear. “Thank you. That would be great.”

“Yeah well, it’ll look great on your CV. And the better your CV, the less you’ll have to suck up to that Rasal guy to keep your job.”

She opens her mouth automatically to defend Rajan’s name but closes it again. It’s her fault he’s being dragged through the mud.

Terry misinterprets her silence and leans in conspiratorially. “It’s okay. I won’t say anything to anyone.”

Someone calls to Terry and her thank you is lost as he steps away.

Kala moves towards her own workbench but hesitates. The pile of files is still sitting on Terry’s desk. He and the man who’d called him over are bent over a document, engrossed in a hushed conversation. As subtly as she can, she takes the top file off the pile and slides it between the papers she’s holding. She walks calmly away.

Despite Terry’s doom and gloom attitude, he does get a lunch break. In fact, everyone working on the new project disappears at roughly the same time. The rumour among those not invited is there’s an expensive lunch on the sixth floor. Kala imagines it’s compensation for coming in so early. Terry would have preferred a cheque, she’s sure. 

She doesn’t mind missing out. Not when the lab is so quiet. She takes off her safety glasses and opens the stolen file.

Kala skims the documents. There isn’t enough information in what she has to get a complete picture but as near as she can tell, it’s a new drug about to enter the first phase of human trials. She shudders thinking of Felix drugged into a stupor in a clinic bed. If they hadn’t got him out... If the clinic hadn’t been raided... Would Felix have been an unwitting member of those impending experiments? 

As despicable as it is, she understands the secrecy around the office now. They need to conceal the unethical origins of what they’re working on or they’ll never be able to sell it. What she can’t figure out is why the Rasal company would pay for such research. According to Terry they paid quite a lot. 

The answer must be in what the drug is for: to combat a neurological condition Kala has never heard of. She goes to her computer to look it up but Riley’s hand over hers stops her.

“Psycellium,” Riley reads nervously over her shoulder.

Kala looks up at her. Her face is drawn. She’s gaunt. The bright blue dye in her hair has faded to a washed out grey. Kala can feel the heavy ache in Riley’s soul and the gentle rocking of the boat beneath her feet. Will is the same unreachable white noise he’s been for weeks.

“Psycellium is what makes us _us_ ,” Riley explains. “It’s how we’re speaking now. But it’s also what they use against us. Yrsa told me it’s what they use to track us. It’s what Whispers is using to torture Will.”

“Be careful,” Wolfgang warns standing by Kala’s side.

“Very careful,” Nomi agrees. 

Kala closes the file and hides it in her desk.

 

It’s late when she lets herself into the new apartment.

Wolfgang jumps at the turn of the key. It takes Felix longer to get to his feet.

“Hi,” Wolfgang greets her shyly as Kala takes off her coat. 

“Hi,” she replies. 

Felix gestures to the remains of their dinner, dirty plates and a pot still half-full with food. “Would you like something to eat?”

She shakes her head.

Life is full of narrow escapes. Of disasters only barely averted. She thinks of Riley, and Nomi, and Will. She thinks of finally pushing Felix’s wheelchair through the clinic door. The answer to saving Will is within her reach, she knows it is, hidden in those files behind locked doors. But before she takes the risk to find it, Kala needs to know that if she fails, she’ll leave no regrets behind. 

She tilts up on her toes and presses her lips to Wolfgang’s.

It takes him by surprise. He barely has a chance to kiss her back before she pulls away and turns to Felix next.

Felix laughs softly, happily, into their kiss. He loops his arms around her waist and holds her close. “I wasn’t sure if...”

“I wasn’t sure either,” she confesses, breathing the words against his cheek. “But I am now.” 

She tangles her fingers in Wolfgang’s shirt and pulls him down into their shared embrace.

They trade kisses for what feels like a lifetime in a mess of lips and hands and straining bodies. Kala never wants to stop. But Felix is still weak: she can feel his legs begin to tremble the longer they stand. Wolfgang feels it too. He takes her by the hand and with the other curls his fingers through Felix’s belt loops, leading them to his bedroom.

Wolfgang pushes Felix gently down onto the bed. He tugs off his shirt and crawls over him. 

“Okay?” he asks, running a worried hand down Felix’s chin and over his chest, checking for worsening injuries. 

“I’m perfect,” Felix tells him.

Kala perches on the edge of the bed beside them: she can’t help but agree. Sprawled on the pillows, with his hair tousled and his mouth kiss-bitten red, Felix is beautiful.

Wolfgang leans into her and asks softly, “And you?”

“More than perfect,” she assures him. He slides his hands up her sides, pulling her shirt off too. Felix’s fingers trace patterns on her back. He kisses her shoulder blade. He unhooks her bra.

This time, Kala doesn’t hide herself from them. 

Wolfgang draws back to look at her. She glances up at him demurely through her lashes. His eyes are dark with desire. She feels a rush of something hot and _wanting_ to see him so affected by the sight of her, something that settles into an ache deep between her legs. She squirms on instinct, adjusting her posture. She pulls her shoulders back and her chest pushes out toward him, and Wolfgang reaches out, brushing her long hair back from where it had cascaded forward between them. 

“You’re beautiful,” Felix breathes in her ear. He takes her by the chin and turns her head to meet his mouth.

Wolfgang kisses along the line of her neck. He traces his way over her clavicle and down the centre of her chest. He cups her right breast in his hand and presses his mouth to the left. Kala groans against Felix. Her fingers twist into his hair. She kisses him deeper and hungrier with every touch of Wolfgang’s lips. 

Felix guides her backwards against the sheets. Wolfgang follows. His tongue swirls over one of her tightened nipples and then the next. His mouth moves lower. Felix curls closer to her side. His hands replace Wolfgang’s on her breasts while Wolfgang sucks kisses to the flat plane of her belly.

Kala shifts impatiently under him. Her hips roll up to grind against him, her legs spread wider, and Wolfgang chuckles against her hip. 

“Yes, yes,” he soothes her, tugging the button on her trousers open. He shuffles back to pull them down her hips and off her legs. There’s a rush of cold against her skin as he tosses them aside. Kala shivers and Wolfgang’s mouth is between her legs.

“Oh god, Wolfie,” Felix moans, as if he’s the one being turned inside out every time Wolfgang licks her through her underwear. He runs his hand through Wolfgang’s hair and Wolfgang’s answering groan thrums through her. He slides the thin fabric barrier of her underwear aside. Felix’s fingers slip across her where she’s wet and wanting, and Wolfgang’s tongue follows close behind. 

Gently, carefully, Wolfgang presses the tip of his finger to her. An agonisingly long moment later, it shudders inside. It’s a sensation she doesn’t have the words for, one that leaves her clenching and stretched and desperate. 

“Please,” she begs. She needs more.

He thrusts his finger in all the way. Kala moans, rocking against him with the rhythm of his in-out movement. Felix props himself up on his elbows, to watch where Wolfgang touches her. He looks back to Kala, her hair wild and fanned around her on the pillow. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” she insists.

Still, she gasps as the fullness of Wolfgang’s touch inside her recedes. He steps off the bed to shuck the rest of his clothes. Kala squeezes her thighs together, her body looking for relief anyway it can get it, but it’s a lonely, insipid kind of pleasure that barely fizzles before it’s gone.

Wolfgang puts his hand on her knee. She opens her legs for him again, and he kneels, sitting back on his heels between them. Beside her, Felix rummages through the bedside table while Wolfgang traces circles absently on her inner thigh. A silver square of foil passes from Felix’s hand to Wolfgang’s, and while he kisses Felix deeply for it, Kala curls her hand around him.

Wolfgang is hard and his flesh his hot and as she rubs her thumb along the length of him, she imagines she can feel his pulse throbbing through his veins. She strokes him quickly and then slowly, and Wolfgang holds his body steady. He’s taut with the tension of keeping still as she explores. She licks her lips and wonders what it would be like to put her mouth on him like he did her. 

Wolfgang groans.

His body bows involuntarily toward her. His hips roll, and he thrusts weakly in her grip. She looks up at them and while Felix’s gaze is trained on her hand on Wolfgang, Wolfgang’s eyes are fixed on her mouth. She pulls her hand away and touches her fingers to her lips.

They take a moment to breathe. Felix stretches out beside her again. Wolfgang tears the silver wrapper with his teeth. Kala’s fingers curl in the sheets as she watches him roll the condom on.

It’s tight. She’s tight. It feels like an impossible intrusion and an excruciating pleasure, too much for her to bare but still not even a fraction yet of what she needs. Wolfgang holds himself above her. The muscles of his arms shake with the onslaught of sensation. She can feel his self-control fraying but it’s too soon. 

Their emotions combine as one. It makes it easier for her: the hot, wet, squeeze of her body around him eases the pain at how her body stretches. At how it feels like she might tear.

“Relax,” Felix whispers. He kisses her on her arm. 

He slips his hand between their bodies. His fingers rub circles where Wolfgang had nearly kissed her undone. That, too, dulls the pain. She groans and bucks against them both, Felix’s touch and Wolfgang heavy inside her. It still hurts, but this time, the pleasure that crests with it is truly hers, not a reverberation of what Wolfgang is feeling.

Kala moves against him again. He thrusts, slow and shallow, in return. Now that the waves of it have begun to build, it grabs her like an unstoppable compulsion. It keep building, growing, swelling with the brush of Felix’s fingers, with the slick slide of Wolfgang deep within her. She grabs Wolfgang by the hips and grinds up, pressing herself to him with such a force that Felix’s hand is all but trapped between them.

The tension deep within her breaks. She twists in the sweat-damp sheets. Kala clenches around the weight of Wolfgang. She shudders under Felix’s touch. It leaves her panting, sprawled and loose, her body unfurling in the wake of it.

Felix kisses her cheek, her chin, her neck with sloppy breathless lips. With an iron force of will, Wolfgang eases out of her.

She reaches for him through the haze of the lingering aftermath but he takes her hand. He kisses her palm and shakes his head.

“I already made you bleed.” His voice is heavy with concern, regret. “I don’t want to hurt you more.”

“It’s nothing,” she tells him. But when she shifts to reach for him again, she can feel a low throbbing ache where he has been. “It’s worth it,” she amends.

Wolfgang deftly peels off the condom. Kala averts her eyes. Somehow with all they’re done, the sight still seems obscene.

She turns her head and hides her face in Felix’s unceasing kisses. She feels him move against her. She draws back just enough to see him stroke himself. 

“Oh,” she gasps. He looks debauched. She can’t look away.

Then, Wolfgang is there too. Kala watches as they twine themselves together, Wolfgang’s hand replacing Felix’s, Felix reaching between Wolfgang’s legs instead. They kiss. They twist around each other. They shudder. It doesn’t take long.

Afterward, Kala laughs. She covers her face with her hands.

Felix yawns. “What?” he asks sleepily.

She gestures at the state of the bed. “I never imagined this would be so... messy.” 

Felix laughs too but doesn’t seem perturbed by it. Neither does Wolfgang, who cuddles their sweaty bodies closer together. His emotions settle over Kala as warmly as a blanket: love, affection, satiated lust.

“Life is always messy,” he tells her. “The parts worth living at least.”

 

She steps into the lab and a hush falls across the room. Kala glances around, but no one will meet her eyes. Even Terry looks away. She stares at the floor and the hurries towards to her workbench, fighting down a thousand paranoid fears as to what is going on. A tall, broad man intercepts her. He shoves a cardboard box into her hands. 

“Come with me.”

“What’s going on?” Kala demands but in the absence of an answer, there’s nothing she can do but follow.

Inside the box, her personal effects rattle as she walks.

He leads her to the office of the Berlin CEO.

“Ms. Dandekar,” the CEO says coolly, looking up at her from his desk. “Please sit.”

He slides a sheet of paper across to her. He lays a pen on the desk between them.

Kala puts the box down and picks up the paper. “What is this?”

“A non-disclosure agreement. Please, sign it. HR will process the rest of your dismissal.”

“Dismissal?” she says weakly, her voice wavering in shock. “On what grounds?”

He opens a drawer and pulls out the file Kala had misappropriated from Terry the day before. 

“Breach of security.”

Kala reaches for the pen. She holds it tightly. Her hand hovers above the paper. She’d slandered Rajan’s name but in the end it was she who’d ruined her career not him. But this isn’t just a job to lose, not when there’s something here that might help Will. She cannot give up so easily. She drops the pen. A splatter of ink feathers across the surface of the NDA.

“This is a misunderstanding,” Kala tries.

He wrinkles his nose in distaste. ““Please don’t cause a scene.” 

“I have been a loyal member of this company for years. My work has always been impeccable. Reassign me to the psycellium project and there will have been no breach of confidentiality. This is the kind of cutting edge research you brought me to Berlin to work on.”

Kala is almost out of breath with the force of her self-defence, but a withering stare is all it earns her.

“That may be how things are done in _Mumbai_...” He spits the word dismissively and Kala’s skin prickles with anger. “...but here in Berlin promotions are earned and certainly not available for those who can’t follow the rules.”

“Business is not about how good you are your job,” Sun cuts Kala off before she can retort. “It’s about who you know and how you’re willing to use them.”

Sun leans back in the chair. “Things certainly are different here in Berlin.”

He looks annoyed at Kala’s change in attitude and gestures for the security guard to take her away but Sun holds up her hand to stop him. She leans forward again and says, “In India, we would not have bought research from a man on the run from the police. Nor would we have paid off the police to make the case go away. I think Manendra Rasal would be very interested to know how well the _rules_ of his company are being followed here.”

He blusters. “I know Manendra well.”

“You would know then that it was not so long ago I saved his life. I wonder,” she challenges, “to which of us he owes a greater debt?”

He tries to stare her down but Sun never blinks. With a frustrated grunt, he grabs the NDA and crumples it in his fist. 

“Take Ms. Dandekar to the sixth floor. We will sort out the transfer paperwork later.”

 

In the sixth floor lab, Kala stands in front of a glass fronted cabinet. Inside is a single line of medicine vials: the untested psycellium suppressant. 

She looks over her shoulder, confirming she’s alone. Kala takes a deep breath, and reaches for it.

“No,” Wolfgang growls. “You saw what these kinds of doctors did to Riley. What they tried to do to Nomi. If you do this, you’ll have a target on your back.”

“And what about Will?” Riley interjects with quiet desperation. 

“He saved our lives.” Nomi steps closer to her in solidarity. “He can’t live like this.”

With all of them together, the static buzzing where Will should be shades the background of Kala’s every thought. None of them can live like this.

“If this new drug is everything the data says it is, he won’t have to.”

“ _If_ ” Lito repeats. “It’s still experimental.” 

“We must try it,” Capheus says softly. “If we do nothing, nothing will change.”

Riley twists her hands together anxiously. She wavers, “But what if it makes him worse?” 

“The risk is worth it,” Kala insists. “If it can truly block psycellium production, Whispers won’t be able to see into his mind.”

“And neither will the rest of us,” Sun reminds them. “He’ll be cut off from anyone who isn’t right there with him. We won’t be able to keep him safe. He won’t be able to save anyone’s life.”

Sun looks to Lito and Wolfgang for support. Nomi’s eyebrows draw together while she thinks. Capheus puts his hand comfortingly on Riley’s shoulder, and Kala knows what they’re all thinking: awake but alone, Will would be just as lost to them as he already is.

Her eyes narrow angrily. “Don’t fall for Jonas’s rubbish about being the pinnacle of human evolution. Connections aren’t limited to the ones inside our heads. The world is full of greater miracles than the one granted to us by our biology.”

She looks at Felix, watching TV while Wolfgang paces up and down the room behind him.

They stand on Lito’s balcony. Hernando and Daniella curl around each other in the dying light.

In Capheus’s van, stuck in traffic, Jela’s laughing voice rings in their ears.

In New York, Amanita pours coffee into Nomi’s empty cup. 

Seated in the prison dining hall, a dozen women gladly share Sun’s table.

Together they stand on the deck of the boat, looking out at the endless seas. 

“Sven,” Riley says to the man at the helm. “We need to get to Berlin.”

**Author's Note:**

> "No one in this world can you trust. Not men, not women, not beasts. This you can trust." is a quote from Conan the Barbarian, 1982.


End file.
